What if we lived in Minecraft?
by Pikazilla
Summary: Imagine if the world of Minecraft was reality. How would you think it would be like? List your ideas in your reviews. This is a thought experiment; there are no right or wrong answers.
1. Intro

Pretty strait forward; what if the logic of Minecraft was our reality? Floating blocks, mining to bedrock within minutes with just a pick, mobs and Creepers. How would all this affect our lives and history?

Now for the sake of argument; I will only be considering the majority of gameplay mechanics. I will avoid debating over if these mechanics are glitches or 'noncanon'. I will only look at the original Minecraft game; not the spinoffs or any fanmade content: meaning no Telltale.

I will consider human history before 1500 AD. This is because modern technology mostly doesn't exist in Minecraft and so I cannot analyze it properly; so no industry, guns, cars, ect.

I will depict the geography of planet Earth exactly the same way it is now; a blocky globe but still a globe, not a cube. Most of the biomes will be located where they are now; deserts in the Middle East, taiga in Russia, ice in Antarctica, ect... Nations of the world begin at the same regions and in similar ways, but only initially; how they evolve depends on Minecraft logic.

This will be set in Hardcore mode; so no respawns.


	2. Food in Minecraft

Farming is the foundation of modern civilization, but because of its importance, the proper use of farming can mean the difference between a baby-boom or a mass famine. Minecraft however never has to worry. Unless your enemy raids your crops and home, you can maintain an absurd surplus of food. If a Steve (player) devotes their occupation to farming, including underground farming or a well protected greenhouse, then they can fuel an entire town all by themselves. Minecraft also has relatively stable climate; no tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis or hurricanes (at least in the current patch). Famine, the leading cause of genocide, will be eliminated (at least initially) since anyone can be a farmer, mastering agriculture in minutes.

Now I am aware that a Minecraft day is absurdly fast, but I think that's because if you were to realistically farm, it would be extremely slow; so the game's days is fast to not make the game slow and boring. So throughout this entire blog, for the sake of argument; a Minecraft day and Steve's speed is what it is ingame.

Considering that a Minecraft day is 20 minutes and that you can farm 4 blocks a second; this means 4800 blocks of crops can be fielded in a day. Assuming it takes 3 carrots a day to resist hunger for a normal Steve (that is not doing any labor intensive work), and assuming that each block of carrots produces 3 carrots (which is the average), then one Farmer Steve could feed a town of about 4799 other Steves (not including himself). If Farmer Steve spends half his time replanting then the yield is about 2399. Considering that this is excluding tractor technology; this crop yield is absolutely absurd. Food (at least initially) would be literally dirt cheap.

This does mean that Minecraft is going to be dangerously overpopulated, even compared to our current day world: almost every issue associated with overpopulation is going to max out. Eventually Minecraft will reach its peak and go only downhill from there. Without population control, virtually all accessible dirt-blocks will be used in some way, shape or form; even if society used 3d or underground farming techniques. What makes this worse is that dirt blocks can be destroyed yet cannot be created, it is a plentiful yet non-renewable resource; especially since feces and decomposition doesn't exist to make new supplies of dirt. This will clearly lead to a war, which I will mention in a later chapter.

In these times of famine or overpopulation; a theoretical Zombie plague could spread rapidly if an overpopulated community is infected from Zombie bites or if those famished and desperate start eating rotten-flesh. However since Zombies are so easy to defeat and die in sunlight; such an outbreak would only work if an underground society was somehow completely defenseless.

Some foods will be relatively luxurious; like fish, apples or cake.

And while it's technically not food; I do want to mention sugar-cane due to paper. With paper, Written Books and fully detailed maps (at least above ground) can be mass produced. This is revolutionary; culture within Minecraft would be diverse from the very start thanks to books spreading novels, philosophies and religions across the world. The use of Maps will also make it easy for the entire world to be recorded, potentially within only a few months. The Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia would have far more interaction with the empires of the Old World. The Silk Road and other highways would remain intact throughout most of history. It is an exchange of culture and politics our Ancient World would only dream about. And repressing or censoring this would be difficult due to underground tunneling and the ease of copying texts.


	3. War in Minecraft

War in any fictional setting is always interesting to talk about; dragons and wizards for LotR, spaceships and spacewizards for StarWars, and literally anything for Yugioh.

Automatically; Minecraft is going to jump right into the Medieval age of combat; although with some interesting twists. Since there is so much to talk about I will sort concepts accordingly…

 **Logistics/Armor/Weapons/Gear:**

Since mining is so easy, it would be easy to assume that armies of fully metallic knights would be the standard. Regions of depleted resources or overpopulation could resort to leather armor and stone weapons, but either way it is very easy to get.

Horsemen historically were the best ancient warrior thanks to their speed. Horse archers can devastate a thick group of foot soldiers; even if they had shields the horsemen could outflank and surround them. Bye bye Spartans.

This does mean that revolutions are more common. Medieval Europe and Japan were able to maintain order by strictly controlling who owned weapons; this is why Ninja weapons were actually mostly farming tools improvised for killing. But in Minecraft; any peasant of any destitution can arm themselves (so long as they don't live in the Nether or End). No amount of repression will ignore that fact. Some of the most darkest workcamps would be impossible to maintain; the mines of South Africa or the gulags of the USSR could easily have the inmates dig out of prison or just rise up against the guard. Any prison would need to look like a Saw movie deathtrap to discourage escape.

Wood is a renewable resource; so excluding harsh biomes, you can instantly make wooden swords for your peasant army. TNT is relatively easy to craft; meaning that terrorist bombings are far more abundant. Like the live servers; anarchy is the law.

Since logistics are so easy, sieges are more aggressive. No longer can you think about starving the population out, or waiting for an army to run out of ammo anytime soon. Remember that each individual Steve can carry 2304 loafs of bread.

 **Tactics**

Conventional battles will be relatively the same, although traps and trenches can be created or deployed even during a battle. What is more interesting is Sieges and Guerrilla Warfare.

 **Sieges** would just be crazy. It is very clear that castles will build themselves ontop of the tallest mountains. It would still need a path for their horses, but otherwise the castle can be built in mid-air. The horse road can easily be dismembered and discarded to block all entrances. Archers can attack from nearly a mile away due to their height advantage. Climbing the mountain would be suicide; a few buckets of lava would turn the mountain into a volcano in just seconds. Being below the castle's murder-holes would make little sense since lava can be dumped onto your forces.

If the castle is on the ground; the easiest way to siege it is to tunnel under the castle. This can be devastating if sappers dig under the walls and detonate TNT to make a huge hole in their wall. However the castle might protect itself by having a layer of lava directly underneath it. It also would be difficult to fight underground if you bump into an underground enemy garrison; it would be quite a melee.

Sieges would be a battle of construction in 2 ways; from the groundlevel or by a siege-tower.

Some battering rams historically had roofs over themselves to block boiling tar from murder-holes. It makes a lot of sense for an invading army to build a roof as they approach the castle walls. Defending knights can try to counter this by jumping onto the roofs and digging new murder-holes into the roof, but this does mean putting these defenders vulnerable to enemy archers as they have to leave the walls.

Cannons would be used by both sides; as TNT is just so destructive. The castle can avoid this by making the walls literally dozens of blocks thick; however this would put a huge strain on construction resources. Cannons would be very valuable weapons since gunpowder (and thus TNT) is rarer than other resources associated with weaponry. In a real life siege, cannons used literally dozens or even 100s of cannonballs a day, each. The country that has the most gunpowder would most likely be the biggest threat. Even if you are facing a full Obsidian castle; they still need to deploy archers to prevent an enemy army from just walking up to the front door and picking away the Obsidian. A TNT cannon does massive anti-personal damage.

The best way to avoid murderholes entirely would be to make siege towers. Historically, such towers were very expensive and had to be deployed touching the enemy castle gates. These towers can be built like a bridge instead, allowing invaders to go over enemy moats of lava and landmines with the only obvious risk being the enemy soldiers; which would be a threat anyways. The defenders could stall by making a wall in front of the bridge, but the invaders could tunnel through the wall.

I assume that Iron Golems could be used as a last line of defense; when the wall is breached, send in the GOLEM HORDE!

Side notes: castles would most likely be EVERYWHERE. The majority of the middle and upper class homes would live in something resembling Bran Castle. Even a peasant home could be a mile wide wooden fort. I will mention more about construction in a later chapter.

 **Guerrilla Tactics** rely on three things; ambushes, propaganda and survival.

Ambushes would be absurdly easy. Tunnels are an obvious tool to do such ambushes; the Viet Cong confirmed that. Nether Portals would make it even easier; all it takes is one Obsidian block to be removed to disable the Portal, allowing plenty of time to escape. Sniping could also be effective, if the archer is good enough. Like I mentioned; traps and explosives would be far more devastating with TNT. Most buildings that were not fortified could be easily destroyed.

As mentioned with the books; it is easy to massproduce scripts containing information that can be used to spread propaganda. One thing to mention here is that the Viet Cong intentionally wanted to injure American soldiers, preferring to have a crippled soldier return to his home as direct evidence of the cruelty his government drafted him into. However with regeneration a thing, this tactic would be impossible. The Viet Cong also demonstrated that the destructive use of napalm and carpet bombing was hypocritical to the US mission of 'FREEDOM!' However this tactic also would not be effective as it is very easy to repair or at least patch up the damage caused by such destruction.

Surviving in general is somewhat easy due to tunneling and the ability to grow food underground. The biggest issue is getting discovered. Since stone can be produced, it can seal up entrances to underground bases easily. This poses a major problem however as the discovery of an underwater base can lead to that base being flooded. Lava would obliterate everything while water would be very easy to collect. Using sand or gravel to literally bury the tunnel-rats would also be scary. Emergency exists most likely exist to compensate; however the easiest way to escape would be to dig back to the surface; which would make you exposed to the enemy army. These raids would be very claustrophobic; although somewhat survivable if you are lucky.

 **Mobs** would be somewhat of a threat; although since Charcoal is renewable and so it is very likely that populated areas will be completely illuminated to prevent Mob spawning. Mob-Hunting Steves most likely will exist; to collect Mob related items like Creeper Gunpowder. Mob-Traps might be used as castle defenses; although Lava makes more sense unless you can somehow corral dozens of Creepers. Golems would be common in areas with enough resources to spare.

Special Builds have the potential to build almost anything. I am avoiding these in this and future chapters for the sake of simplicity, but I will mention that some of these complex builds, like a literal bomber plane, can be made for the sake of warfare.

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	4. Building in Minecraft

Minecraft is known for its blocks and buildings; and because of this, the architecture of buildings and cities are going to be quite absurd.

 **Shelter**

A house that in real life needs about 5 months to build. A house can be built in Minecraft within a few minutes. Safe to say that, unless overpopulation peaks, homelessness would be virtually impossible; unless the Steve intends to be a hermit or nomad. Since sanitation is not an issue; homes can easily be made as holes in the ground, even if you are just going out camping.

At the same time; destroying a home and stealing from it is very easy since even the hardest blocks can be picked or chopped away at with tools. You can make a nice palace made out of cakes; but a greedy thief, raiding Mongolian horde or a basement troll would chop it apart with ease while you are chilling at Starbucks. Obsidian houses are a possibility, but are more tedious to construct and would be considered more valuable; and also can still be torn down with tools. The majority of any civilization are low income, so not everyone will have access to the best resources or building materials. Wood planks are arguable the easiest blocks to use for construction; and it's not very strong in Minecraft.

A police force would have to be a necessity in any city, regardless of the size. As mentioned before; prisons would have to be very complex in order to prevent someone from easily digging their way out. The only simple deterrent would be to make arson and theft be a severe felony. The Middle East has been criticized for still maintaining the punishment of 'cutting off the hands of a thief' (aka why Jasmine from Aladdin was threatened with a sword for stealing an apple). However it is exactly this harshness that maintains the deterrent. Many criminologists cite pacifism as a major cause of the massive prison population in the USA; some gangsters do not care if they are thrown in prison, they don't consider that a threat. But at least there are locks and alarms in the USA to prevent robberies; most Minecraft homes will not have any alarm or defense against thieves (unless they make a redstone contraption; but not everyone is going to make or afford it.) Watchtowers could exist for the smaller towns.

If a city is stable enough to repress this crime, then we can proceed with construction of these two things; arts and architecture.

 **Art**

As expected; everything will be blocky. But otherwise; art will be basically anything you can think of. It would be difficult to make any detailed piece of art without making it the size of Godzilla, but it would also be easy to do. Most likely the biomes considered to be irrelevant in resources (like oceans, swamps and stone mountains; Nether and End might be too dangerous…) would be used to house these art projects. Again; they would be major targets for terrorists, but it would be interesting nonetheless what massive structures would be made.

 **City Architecture**

Cities will be both practical and impossibly amazing. The richest cities would look like a utopia beyond physical possibilities; with palaces potentially paved with gold, diamonds or emeralds. Most large multiplayer servers already have these locations, so I won't mention them much here.

Highways will exist in some cities; especially highways that go above forests or oceans or drill through mountains. These highways can be for either monorails/railroads (via minecarts) or for walking/horse riding. Whether private highways are allowed to be constructed or if these roads will have tolls will depend on the city. However roads have historically been targets of bandits due to their traffic yet lack of security; think coach and train robberies of the Wild West. A policeforce would have to be made specifically to patrol the roads; especially for monorails which could be sabotaged and redirected into lavatraps. Caravans would be common, unless a monorail is created for 'Minecart with Chest's.

Would hospitals even be a thing? Considering that milk cures poisons and food heals; I would think a farm would be a hospital. Even then, the demand would not be significant considering how easy it is to get food. The only significant aliments would be famine and a potential Zombie Plague: considering the latter, it is possible that police might carry golden apples for the sake of curing Zombies. Heck; the police can be medics as well to assist anyone who is harmed by feeding them. Cemeteries would not exist (in the sense of burying bodies), but obituaries would exist in some form; including tombstones.

Plumbing and sewage would also be irrelevant. 'Lava Trashcans' are frequently used to destroy items, so landfills will most likely not exist. Junkyards maybe could exist, but considering how almost anything can be crafted; it would basically be a Donation Center that will be almost constantly empty. Shops would clearly exist, virtually any multiplayer server has some kind of shop. Blacksmiths would be rare since their skill is universal; although they could still sell their craft.

Carpenters might exist; but considering how ANY Steves of any skill can build, this would be a minimal wage job. Multiple Carpenters would be hired for massive projects, but for house building it would be relatively irrelevant.

Modern cities are clearly full of skyscrapers, and this can be taken to extremes in Minecraft. Keep in mind that skyscrapers began as recently as the 1800s; but such a concept in Minecraft will exist since the dawn of mankind. Pyramids would either be seen as lazy, or would be literally the size of a mountain.

Hostile Mob Zoos are a possibility, if the cages are shaded. Although I don't think people would enjoy seeing the animals that maul them on a weekly basis.

 **Terraforming**

Tragedy of the Commons is a concept that, without strict regulations, natural resources would eventually be stripped regardless of the damage that would do to society. Some cities will be surrounded by wastelands caused by greedy civilians over-mining the land. As mentioned before; oceans are a relatively minor biome for resources; so they could be drained for the sake of tapping into the dirt resources underneath to protect the land. Renewable blocks, like Wooden Planks, could replace the independent quarries so that there is still ground to walk on; but boy, that would be sad to see that the very ground had to be artificially replaced because Steves got greedy. Maybe just be lazy and settle your town ontop of bedrock to guarantee that you have foundation to walk on.

 **Creative Mode**

Basically the Twilight Zone episode A Nice Place to Visit: you can do basically anything and you can't die, and despite being able to make planets out of diamond, it would get very boring very fast. So enjoy divine immortality, then eventually, jump into the void!


	5. Law in Minecraft

The Social Contract Theory, primarily credited by Thomas Hobbes, declares that mankind created society for the sake of security despite removing liberties by doing so. Minecraft is a game about creativity and individual input; but a Minecraft civilization would only be stable if it creates laws. What laws would be made?

 **Illegal Blocks and Contraband**

It might sound absurd at first, but there are some things in Minecraft no king would want their subjects to have.

The Ring of Gyges suggests that the ability to turn invisible would be the ultimate weapon for a criminal. Political assassinations, murder, theft, arson and maybe rape (I don't know if sex is even a thing in Minecraft for Steves) would be rampant if Invisibility Potions aren't strictly banned. Combine this with an EnderPearl, and the Ninjas will be godlike.

Lava buckets and TNT are clearly far too dangerous for people to have. Lava itself might be collected by the government (for both a weapon of war and to prevent civilians from using it). If this was the case, the entire Nether would be forbidden.

Whether a town will ban or allow weapons will vary from town to town, but armor should be legal in most areas.

 **Wealth**

Diamond, Emerald, Gold, Nether Stars and maybe nonrenewable items (namtags, saddles) might be used as ingame currency: especially Gold since it can be divided into nuggets for smaller transactions.

Considering the value of Beacons and assuming that Nether Stars are used as currency, a 'Wither Farm' could exist where Withers are produced to farm Nether Stars.

Banks maybe exist, but secrecy (like hiding vaults underground or underwater) or a heavily fortified defense with security guards would be the best defense against bank robbers.

Land plots might exist in the smaller or denser areas; although less dense areas might have no restrictions. As expected; land can be bought or sold like in the real world.

 **Mobs**

As mentioned before; Mob Hunters and Police would exist to easily take out the Mobs. Some small towns maybe will have a curfew when the Mobs spawn at night. Attempting to weaponize, own or massproduce Mobs most likely will be illegal. Cockfighting might exist for the Mobs. Being turned into a Zombie might be a common form of execution for the sake of maintaining a Zombie horde that could be used as a weapon. That's… morbid to think about…

Hostile Mob Spawners are clearly a threat because you can create an infinite amount of Hostile Mobs.


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